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Monday, December 15, 2014

By Patricia McBroom“Picture
a pasture open to all,” where each herdsman strives to keep as many
cattle as possible on the commons, an economist wrote almost 50 years
ago. The rational choice for each individual is to add more animals
to his herd without regard for the welfare of neighbors, and they all
do that as they march inexorably toward mutual destruction – the
“Tragedy of the Commons” as described by Garrett Hardin.

“Each
man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd
without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination
toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a
society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a
commons brings ruin to all,” Hardin wrote in Science Magazine in 1968.

Groundwater Commons

By
far, the largest, most important commons in California is the water
beneath our feet, and it is well on its way toward ruin. Large
basins beneath the valley floors contain up to ten times the capacity
of all the state's reservoirs put together (42 million acre feet).
They are uncharted and boundless, subterranean streams of water
flowing among the rocks in mysterious, unexpected ways from one
region to another. And they are shrinking.

In
these years of drought, a giant sucking sound could be heard
throughout the Central Valley as farmers pumped ever more water from
the rocks beneath the earth. The deeper the drill, the more ancient the layers. As they pumped, the land sank, along
with the water table. In some areas of the San Joaquin Valley, only
the biggest, wealthiest farmers could go deep enough to reach the
water, and they did, leaving their neighbors literally in the dust
with dry wells. Surface land in portions of the San Joaquin Valley
sank by up to ten inches in just six months of this year, from May to
October.

100 years of Exploitation

Californians
have been exploiting this commons for 100 years with precious few
restrictions. There has been no statute governing its use. The only
law that even affects groundwater pumping has come through case law
when a property owner sued another for infringing on his rights. In
these rare instances, judges have ruled that a property owner's right
to pump water from the ground is not unlimited.
Neighbors have rights as well – called correlative rights – and
any one property owner can only take his fair share of the safe
yield. But aside from this case law – of which the particulars are
hard to determine (what is “safe yield” from an uncharted basin?)
– the state has never imposed any limits on groundwater pumping.

That
is now changing.

First Statute to Govern Commons

Next
month, in January, the first written law governing this commons will
go into effect, a statute requiring local groups to create
sustainability agencies that will be charged with bringing depleted
groundwater reservoirs into balance. If locals don't do it within
the next few years, the state's water board has been empowered to
come in and correct the balance. This is the first time in
California's history that state authorities (other than courts) have given themselves the
power to stop a property owner from taking water from beneath his
land. But it will be a while before such power comes into play.

The
first opportunity to restrict pumping will be
January of 2020, the deadline for passage of a local sustainability
plan, said David Orth, manager of the Kings River Conservation
District in the San Joaquin Valley and member of the powerful
California Water Commission which will be making decisions on surface
and groundwater storage with new state bond money approved by voters
this year.

King's County's Dave Orth surveying a
recharge pond

“A
lot of things can happen in five years and that concerns me.... but
this problem doesn't lend itself to a quick fix,”said Orth. “Any
attempt tomorrow to restrict groundwater use, or even to set fees is
likely to lead to a legal challenge. We have to be patient and
recognize that it took 100 years to get here. It will take at least
20 to get out of it.”

Counties Stepping Up

Meanwhile,
county supervisors in the San Joaquin Valley are stepping into the
breach to find various ways to halt the overdraft in their local
groundwater basins. It's an urgent issue in counties like Merced,
Stanislaus, Madera and Kern where lands are sinking and wells are
running dry. Farmers are split, some opposing any restrictions;
others calling for a moratorium on extraction.

“Before,
farmers were united against doing anything,” said Sarge Green, a
program director from the California Water Institute at Fresno State,
who is helping counties write groundwater ordinances. “Now they are
being damaged by each other, and it has created a powerful incentive
to do something. You have farmers saying, 'I don't want my neighbor
to export water to another county or build a giant well that dries up
mine'.”

The
issues are so contentious that a groundwater lawsuit in San Luis
Obispo County had to be moved to Santa Clara County last month
because no one was neutral in the county of origin. San Luis Obispo
supervisors had passed a moratorium last year on new well drilling
from the Paso Robles groundwater basin and the county is now being
sued by 35 plaintiffs. They argue that no official can restrict their
right to pump whatever they need.

Local Variability

Elsewhere,
Madera and Kern counties both considered a moratorium on pumping and
rejected the idea. On the other side of the issue, Stanislaus County
passed an ordinance restricting people from certain unincorporated
areas from extracting water without a permit, while Merced County is
considering a similar ordinance that would also restrict export of
water from the county.

Merced
supervisor Diedre Kelsey said she became aware of the need for county
action when she discovered that two individuals from her district
were trying to pump local groundwater and sell it to buyers in
another county. “We may need an immediate moratorium,” she said.

The
issues are complicated.

Agony and Creativity in Reaching for Sustainability

In
Kings county, Orth and others are striving to create a sustainability
plan, bringing farmers together to expand land devoted to recharge
basins – areas where water can sit for several weeks to soak into
the aquifer below. They have even tried flooding grape fields with
18 inches of water for two months during the dormant season. In that
case, they came out ahead of the game with a bumper harvest. They're
now looking at how long they can leave water standing in an orchard,
anything to build the recharge capacity of an area where agriculture
is outrunning available water.

Orth
estimates that the Kings area is farming about five percent more land
than can be sustained with current water supplies. “Our strategy
is to make every bit of that up with flood water (recharge) and
voluntary water conservation to avoid land retirement,”he said, adding that the state as a
whole is over-farming by a significant amount and will have to retire
some agricultural land, if it cannot replenish the underground
aquifers.

“That's
the word that everyone is trying to avoid,” said Juliet
Christian-Smith, climate scientist with the Union of Concerned
Scientists. “Everybody is bending over backwards to not have that
conversation (about land retirement) right now,” said Christian-Smith. Instead they are talking about moratoriums and ordinances,
data and analysis:

“
'How much groundwater are we using? How much is being replenished
naturally? What do we need to do to reach the level of sustainable
yield? What does proportional reduction look like? Should we buy
out landowners?' They have to figure out what has gone on so far.”
said Christian-Smith.

Can
Californians learn to cooperate in this commons and not take more
than their “fair share” of a “safe yield”? It's a good
question. Some people may cooperate voluntarily; others will no
doubt need the police powers of the state and counties before they
stop taking their lion's share of precious water.

About Me

Journalist/anthropologist; author of two books, former science and magazine writer with the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Published "The Third Sex," on women adapting to formerly all-male career roles in the financial districts of New York and San Francisco in 1986 with wide reviews.
As professor, taught courses on women and work at UC Berkeley, Mills College, Rutgers University and Diablo Valley College. Affiliated with the California Studies Association at UC Berkeley.